Comments

Formal Opinion of the State Bar No. 1996-146: "When a client is engaging in an ongoing fraud, the lawyer must be careful to avoid assisting in the fraud in any way. ... If the client does not refrain from the fraudulent conduct, the lawyer must either limit the scope of her representation to matters that do not involve participation in or furthering the client's fraud, or withdraw." If his neglect of the accounts permitted the deposits into and withdrawals out of the client trust account, as the FBI investigation unveils, Hoffman enabled and assisted his client in avoiding law enforcement and known judgment creditors. By the time of the first $400,000 deposit into Hoffman's client trust account, Hoffman had been put on notice of Chartraw's judgment creditors via the attorney's voicemails. By the time of the second $75,000 deposit, Hoffman knew his client was a fugitive with an outstanding arrest warrant for "senior financial elder abuse" - he represented Chartraw in the criminal case and had been served with money judgments against Chartraw ranging from $30K to $4.5 million. Had Chartraw deposited any of this money into an account of his own, it would have been detectable by law enforcement and financial institutions. Hoffman's apparent disregard of and failure to monitor his client trust account enabled Chartraw to evade detection and continue to perpetuate a fraud on the public. (These factual allegations are all extracted from the FBI Agent's sworn affidavit and the attorney's sworn declaration; of course, until proven in court, these are only allegations, but one must consider the high reliability of these sources of the information.) As for McGregor Scott's comments, yes it is an extremely common practice to HAVE a client trust account. It is an extremely UNCOMMON practice and in fact a violation of an attorney's ethical obligations to permit a client unfettered access to the account. The State Bar's Client Trust Account Handbook warns, "allowing other people access to your client trust bank account is risky" and suggests the attorney be the only one with access. According to the California Supreme Court, an attorney breaches his professional duties when he gives complete control of a client trust account to the client. Even if somehow unaware of the client's fraud, this ethical lapse warrants discipline by the State Bar. As for Phimister, I don't think he could have put it any better: A client trust account is "not for hiding money." Yet, that's what we're looking at here. Money was hidden from detection by way of placement in a client trust account. In spite of this, why do these officials, whom this paper holds out as "persons of note" and asks you to trust keep insisting none of the allegations point to any wrongdoing? Why does the M-D refuse to present the public with the documents to let them decide for itself?